Folks on visa- how do you feel about immigration?
I’m writing this post because I believe that I’ve an unhealthy obsession with green card and becoming an American citizen. One day my mom asked me why do I care so much that I’m on a 100 year EB backlog and not have a green card- I replied that it will help me to vote, work for companies that can’t sponsor my H1, and that I can travel more with an American passport and I wouldn’t need to keep applying for a new visa every 3 years. I then realized that I don’t really care about these things because I just want to keep working for FAANG and keep making money. Then why should I care so much about the backlog! Maybe I feel obsessed about the GC because my friends who were not born in India get it much more easily than I do and I feel that getting a GC is not a big deal and that I should have it too (it feels discrimination not to get the GC rather than feeling entitled to get it)
I wanted to ask how others felt! And this forum is great, because unlike the world where 20% of the population is India, blind is 80% Indians lol
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almost every country blocked foreign nationals from entering their country which includes immigrants who have been working in the country for several years if not decades.
TBH, I didn’t feel the pain until the covid lockdown. It made me feel like an outsider despite making USA my “home”.
There are so many other restrictions for H1B workers (can’t stay jobless for more than 3 months, can’t leave the job to pursue education without losing your place in the green card queue, can’t switch to a different job outside your core domain… the list is long and painful.
I don’t know how many times I have wished that my parents visiting Nepal and I was accidentally born there instead of Delhi. I didn’t feel discriminated when I had a hard time traveling to USA or needing visas to travel to almost everywhere but I feel discriminated because I’m being denied a green card because of the country I was born, it wasn’t in my control
1. It gives me the flexibility to travel in and out of the US without having to worry about visas.
2.I will no longer have to plan my travels around visa appointment date.
3. Biggest one, I will no longer have to live in constant fear that I might not be able to visit India for any types of emergencies if I no longer have a valid visa stamp. One cannot plan for emergencies.
I wish I never came to the US. Now I am at a point where the idea of returning back to India will create a rift with my spouse. I am in this "trishanku swarga" state where I can neither enjoy the US fully, nor I can go back. And GC will liberate me from this limbo state.